By Betsey Piette
March 25, 2026

Unable to sell their very unpopular war against Iran to the U.S. people, President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth are attempting to stifle critical media coverage.

Months before the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, in October 2025, Hegseth limited Pentagon press passes to people who agreed not to gather information on military actions that Trump had not approved for release.

On March 20. Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, struck down Hegseth’s unconstitutional effort to deny the media’s right to report independently and without government control. Judge Friedman’s scathing 40-page ruling upheld the importance of independent journalism.

Trump is likely to appeal Friedman’s ruling. Even before the decision was issued, Trump was attacking journalists and news sources for reporting the truth about his war on Iran. He labeled their stories “fake news” and called the reporters “terrorists” who should be subject to the death penalty when their accounts contradicted his incessant lies.

Trump called journalists the “enemy of the people.” It’s no surprise that Trump is once again choosing to ignore the provisions of the 1791 Bill of Rights that provides for freedom of the press.

Having failed to try to establish any “justification” for his increasingly unpopular war in Iran, Trump wants to censor news of the war. He is particularly fearful of reports that the U.S. war efforts are failing, at the very same time that the costs of this war are hitting the wallets of people at home.

Reality war gameshow

Trump even tried to sell his bungled war with a promotional video circulated by the administration on social media. The racist, Islamophobic propaganda piece celebrates U.S. deadly strikes on Iran while blurring actual footage from U.S. bombing raids with graphics resembling video games, music and action film footage — turning the war’s deadly destruction and toll on human lives into a profoundly disturbing form of entertainment.

In a parallel effort to censor and control media coverage, the administration has long promoted the media monopoly of David Ellison, the billionaire founder of Paramount Skydance. Ellison’s family took over control of CBS News in 2025. Currently, Ellison, a strong supporter of Trump as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is trying to gain control of CNN, one of the media corporations under attack by Trump. The purchase still requires approval from the Trump administration.

History of war censorship

Trump is not the first U.S. president to censor news of U.S. wars abroad. The Pentagon Papers, published by the New York Times in 1971, revealed that successive U.S. administrations, including those under Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, systematically lied about the extent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. They particularly lied to hide that the war was unwinnable.

But the censorship failed. The image of Vietnamese nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running naked after being severely burned on their back by an Air Force napalm strike in 1972 helped galvanize opposition to the war. It became an image seen around the world.

During the first Gulf War in 1990-91, then-President George H.W. Bush, knowing that media coverage would fuel opposition to the war, heavily restricted press access to frontline reporting. Military personnel delivered the “news” at staged press conferences, with sanitized combat footage of Bush’s “just war.”

In the 2003 Iraq War, former President George W. Bush spent months making false claims about Iraq to promote the war and then limited media coverage to reporters “embedded” in U.S. military units. They were again limited to portraying the U.S. military narrative, which usually meant overlooking the mounting civilian casualties.

Since the start of the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, an estimated 270 journalists and media workers and sometimes family members, the majority Palestinian, have been killed by targeted Israeli military strikes. This has been considered the deadliest conflict for journalists in history.

In a continuing assault on journalists, an Israeli airstrike on March 19 struck and injured Russia Today reporter Steve Sweeney and camera operator Ali Rida. The missile struck just a few feet from where they were covering the war in southern Lebanon.

Trump keeps issuing contradictory claims about the war on Iran — both its purpose and its progress or lack of progress. He has alternately said that Iran’s military capacity was obliterated, while making threats about what the U.S. will do if Iran doesn’t concede.

Coverage by independent and progressive media that are not controlled by the imperialists is more critical than ever and must be defended.